In a world that we are being taught to doubt ourselves – directly, by our caretakers, teachers and indirectly, by many pop-culture elements – beginning from early ages, it is a natural outcome that self-doubting became a part of our decision making process. When to listen to self-doubt and when not? According to our teachers: All the time! They even sold us the act of doubting ourselves as being ‘sure-footed‘ or ‘risk avoiding’, thus a ‘virtue‘!
And did they ever mention the risk of over-doubting yourselves? No, they most likely haven’t. This habit of over-doubting might lead to a serious mental health problem.
When should you listen to your self-doubt and when you shouldn’t?
The word ‘should’ might easily sound irritating to many, but it may help some of us pay more attention to the following sentence: Self-doubt loving adults often try to save themselves -and others- from falling into ‘disastrous situations’…like a wrong career choice…or a wrong choice for a romantic partner. Making wrong choices in any of those mentioned cases is no fun by any means! But, what about the growth that may take place, because of those experiences?
Please keep in mind: Staying in our very strictly described comfort zones & NOT making those choices, can make us feel stuck in life. When we feel so, we usually can not understand the reason and ask ourselves that same question, over and over again. “Why do I feel stuck in my life?” When you can not figure out why you created this experience (of feeling stuck) in your life, you may start getting headaches. And the energy that is meant to flow in & around all your body -through your energy centers or ‘chakras‘- will get more stuck.
Short summary: Continuously self-doubting may lead to inaction in life, which possibly may lead to feeling stuck in life!
There are several of those inner voices
Not all second thoughts are negative. Some of them may save us from serious trouble.
It may be difficult for many of us to distinguish between self-doubt that mostly holds us back from success / creativity / growth, and the inner voice or that gut feeling, which could actually help you avoid a disaster.
As an intuitive and a healer, let me tell you the difference: It’s about the ‘vibration‘ of that inner voice.
Inner voices according to their vocalizers
Self-doubting is closely related to one of the basic human emotions: Fear! In this case, it is mostly about the fear of failure. And our Ego absolutely hates the risk of failure. When ego senses any slightest risk of failure, it uses ‘self-doubting’ as a tool to scare us, so that we would immediately give up that risky-looking action.
If we don’t immediately give up, Ego increases its pitch, and it chooses a harsher vocabulary to make us stop considering that risky action. And what if we still don’t give up? A stronger voice of ‘self-doubt’ will echo in our heads. I assume that you’ve got the picture. The characteristics of this inner voice (Ego) here are: Nervous, anxious, unsure, loud and repetitive.
The characteristics of the other inner voice (higher-self) that wants to save us from trouble would be: Calm, certain, loving, confident, peaceful, wise and non-repetitive!
It doesn’t necessarily mean that the wise inner voice of our higher-self warns us only once. What it means is that, it surely doesn’t push you to change your mind, in a compulsive, fearful, and auto-repeating mode.
How to differentiate between the ego and our higher-selves?
My humble advice to anyone, who simply can not be sure of the source of their self-doubt, would be simple but very efficient: Sit down, close your eyes, take a few slow, but deep breathes in & out (if you have a regular meditation practice you can also do that), and focus your attention to the source of that self-doubting voice. How does it vibrate? Is it peaceful? Is it somewhat anxious? Is it repeating itself non-stop? Is fear of failure the focal point of this inner voice?
With some practice, you will slowly, but surely develop a fine understanding about such situations. And after attaining that awareness, perhaps you may find yourself thinking of creative solutions instead of vocalizing the usual self-doubt. You may prefer to act boldly instead of focusing on why you can’t do it.
Sometimes what you just need to do is taking risk, which may open the door for you to all new possibilities.
I encourage you to challenge your self-doubt, mildly & wisely.
Kıvanç Öroglu
Healer & Transformative Coach
IMAGE:
Photo by Media Lab from FreeImages
Photo by <a href=”/photographer/medialab-31310″>Media Lab</a> from <a href=”https://freeimages.com/”>FreeImages</a>
